Harvard vs. Yale? This Rivalry Is Even Colder

By Jonathan Mahler -
Apr 10, 2013

The Frozen Four, college ice
hockey’s equivalent of basketball’s Final Four, begins Thursday
night in Pittsburgh. This year’s surviving quartet features none
of the traditional college hockey powerhouses: no University of
Minnesota, no Boston University, no Boston College.

It does, however, feature college hockey’s version of
Florida Gulf Coast University -- Quinnipiac University. Like
FGCU, Quinnipiac has recognized that nothing can raise a
school’s profile like a successful sports team.

Even if you aren’t a college hockey fan, you probably know
Quinnipiac for its polls on political races and issues. And if
you are a puck-head, you undoubtedly got to know the team this
year when it reeled off 21 consecutive victories and rose to No.
1 in the national rankings.

During the streak, the Bobcats looked more like the
Charlestown Chiefs than a college-hockey team. Most of the
players were sporting mustaches that they refused to shave until
they lost. “Muzzy Power,” they called it.

The Bobcats have since shaved, but they still don’t look
much like a college-hockey team -- and not just because they
skate so fast and hit so hard. The average age of the team is
24. One of their forwards, Kevin Bui of Edmonton, Alberta, will
turn 26 this month. Eight of the Bobcats’ 13 Canadians came
straight from the British Columbia Hockey League, which produces
some of the world’s best professional players.

Shameless Strategy

Recruiting in Canada, focusing on athletes who are older
and more physically developed -- these are not exactly novel
strategies in college hockey. The Bobcats have just executed
them a little more shamelessly than everybody else, which is
generally how they do things at Quinnipiac.

“By adopting the mind-set of business executives,” wrote
University President John Lahey in 2006, “we are blending
business into higher education -- with remarkable results.”
Lahey created Quinnipiac’s polling institute in large part
because it was a good way to get the university’s name mentioned
in the news media on a regular basis. Since becoming president
in 1987, he has radically expanded the school’s campus and its
enrollment. What was once a suburban Connecticut commuter
college is now aspiring to be a major university.

A major university, that is, run by cost-conscious business
executives. Quinnipiac relies heavily on part-time teachers, and
Lahey even busted the faculty union several years ago -- not
long before he tried to dissolve the women’s volleyball team and
replace it with a less expensive alternative: competitive
cheerleading. (The volleyball team was reinstated after a
lawsuit.)

Where does hockey fit into all of this? In the mid-1990s,
Lahey realized that Quinnipiac was missing out on the free
publicity customarily lavished on successful Division I sports
programs. He wanted one, too. The only question was which sport
would provide the greatest return on investment.

Football was too expensive: too many scholarships, among
other things. Quinnipiac would take a run at Division I
basketball, but in college hoops the competition is fierce.

Hockey was a better bet. Quinnipiac already had a Division
II team, albeit one that played its games in a public skating
rink and was coached by a high school history teacher. The
sport’s audience may be regional, but in those regions -- mostly
the Northeast and the frozen tundra of Minnesota and the Dakotas
-- it’s plenty big. And plenty rabid.

In 1997, the Bobcats moved up to Division I. A decade
later, the school opened a $52 million arena -- an instant draw
for prospective hockey recruits of every age. (The arena
includes separate facilities for the school’s still struggling
basketball program.)

Biggest Coup

From a marketing perspective, though, Quinnipiac’s biggest
coup was scoring an invitation to join hockey’s storied Eastern
College Athletic Conference. The move put Quinnipiac (noteworthy
alumnus: Murray Lender, inventor of what he called “the Jewish
English muffin”) in the company of a handful of Ivy League
schools.

More to the point, Quinnipiac wanted to create an instant
rivalry with another ECAC school, its neighbor several miles
down Whitney Avenue. Quinnipiac-Yale hasn’t yet achieved the
fame of Harvard-Yale, Quinnipiac athletic director Jack McDonald
says hopefully, “but it’s getting there quickly.”

Of course, Yale doesn’t quite see it that way. As one Yale
alumnus and hockey fan told me, the only thing this traditional
rivalry lacks is a feeling of rivalry and a sense of tradition.
Considering the matter further, he conceded that it might
qualify as a town-gown rivalry.

As it happens, Yale is in the Frozen Four this year, too.
If both teams win their semifinal games -- Yale plays the
University of Massachusetts at Lowell on Thursday afternoon,
before Quinnipiac lines up against St. Cloud State of Minnesota
-- they could meet in the championship game Saturday night. It
would be a new twist on a timeless theme: the preppies versus
the townies, only this time on ice skates.

(Jonathan Mahler is a sports columnist for Bloomberg View.
He is the author of the best-selling “Ladies and Gentlemen, the
Bronx Is Burning” and “Death Comes to Happy Valley.” The
opinions expressed are his own.)